Gene Logsdon: Look Out, The World Is About To End Again…

Last summer I started to fall for the old Doomsday Disaster Doldrums again. It didn’t rain from the middle of May to September. Crops didn’t grow and pasture dried up. I was once more painfully reminded of how close we live to the brink of disaster at all times. The food cliff, if not the fiscal cliff, lurks just one misstep away, or so it seems. Of course the rains did come in September and more in October and now going into December, the pastures are lush and I don’t think I will have to feed hay until January. The latest weather roundup says rainfall in Ohio for the year is about normal. Ho hum.

I never learn. I got a good case of the DDDs in 1988 when it did not rain one drop here from April 11 until July 17. And I can remember my parents and grandparents in the 1930s despairing when it seemed that every other year the weather was taking us to the end of the world. And they didn’t have global warming to blame.

But it was back in the 1880s when the worst (so far) weather came our way. Our Sandusky River, here in northern Ohio, got a crust of ice on it in July, so the old papers say. A huge volcano had erupted in Indonesia in 1883 (Krakotoa) and it sent enough ash and debris into the atmosphere to shade the sun for several years even as far away as Ohio. But not many people here knew that and probably would not have believed it anyway. From every pulpit came the old DDD refrain: the end is nigh.

Can you imagine what would happen in today’s state of chronic paranoia if rivers started to freeze over in July? The great debate would be about a new ice age coming and we would be told that we must burn more coal, oil, and gas to encourage global warming.

There actually was a spurt of worry over global cooling back in the late 1980s. Can’t remember the exact year but I wrote an article in Organic Gardening magazine making fun of it. Then of course in 2000 all was going to be lost again, only computers, not the weather, was the supposed culprit. Now, another replay. All will end next week on Dec. 21. Says so according to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar, whatever that is.

This latest example of how nutty humans are is a little more sophisticated. The world is not going to end this time, I am told, but only that part of human society that has been guilty of environmental destruction. Those few who have not taken part in the wanton money greed and the rampant disregard of natural life, who have stayed out on the ramparts trying to find a way to live that will sustain the earth indefinitely, will be spared. Given the state of the earth right now, it is tempting to believe that kind of doomsday— especially if I am one of those chosen to survive.

It is easy enough to make fun of perpetrators of doomsday but is not the whole debate over climate change possibly another example, although disguised in supposedly more intellectual scientific language? No doubt the earth is presently getting warmer and no doubt we should quit burning so much fossil fuel. But much of the argument sounds unduly alarmist to me. All the numbers I’ve been able to corral in one pen seem to agree that in the last 20 years, the oceans have risen one-half inch. At that rate I have full faith in conniving human nature. We will find a way to adjust. Until then, as one who hates cold weather and loves green pastures, I stand among my sheep grazing in December and mutter quietly so that only the sheep can hear: if this be global warming, I’ve got worse things to worry about.
~~

Gene often displays spirts of remark ignorance not untypical of old farmers I once spent so much time with. Hands on experience and gut feel rule. It’s good to have him here, on the other hand, because it seems likely he is everyman, the precise reason we’re fiddling as the world burns, scarce resources are being exhausted, and the environment gutted. He apparently simply has no basis that he can understand or appreciate to behave otherwise, thanks to our school system and “popular” media. How might we reach him and others of his ilk, beginning with those scattered everywhere through our governments and corporations?

Been bothered by this all afternoon, even had a dream. My poor demented father was fond of saying “Think long and think wrong.” He thought wrong both ways so that worked well for him, but there is wisdom in consulting the gut. Well, not my gut right now which has it in for me, but what we mean by intuition. Logic is, as the AA’s say, “A good way to go wrong with confidence.” Now I am all about being a scientist and empiricism and so forth, but there is more in our world than is accounted for by the formulas and charts. Whenever I feel myself slipping off the beach ball in the direction of materialism I remember the scientific fact that there is no explanation for why such and inordinate number of people accidentally miss flights that subsequently crash. Essentially, I find that I am more than willing to buddy up with the gut people. Besides, someone has to hold the other end of the rope and I would it rather not be me. In an intensely social species like ours with such novelty in adaptation the only conceivable gene pool that is to survive is the one that manages to maintain the greatest range of perceptual styles in its members. Live and let live is a force magnifier for a group under selective pressure. This is the argument I am having a hard time taking away from my current book The Wisdom of Psychopaths. But I have no problem with seeing every other bias and personality style has something to throw into the group survival pot, even if they are annoying at times, and I want to hear from them UNDER DIGNIFIED CIRCUMSTANCES (no shock jock opinion trolls please). The big problem in getting folks with different frames of reference to talk seems to be learning to take turns. Where are the kindergarten teachers who need to lead our public meetings?

Salvation is in the big tent where everyone is welcome, where folks agree on the rules, and everyone enjoys the game in their own way. Libertarians are just closet anarchist after all. The voice that is missing is the voice that is needed. We only have problems when voices are excluded.

Herb, I’m as anarchist as you’re likely to find and have libertarian friends, so I’m with you there. Gene reminds me of my dad and granddads and their neighbors, dirt farmers and good people all. They were, however, remarkably ignorant of the ways of the world and their gut thinking often failed them. I think of those dirt farmers in the Midwest and Central Plains who vote far right en masse. Live and let live is fine, if Wall Street, the corporations, and their political hacks would do the same. The evidence that the climate is warming is stupendous, but you’d never know this if you didn’t take the time to explore and think about the evidence. You surely wouldn’t know it if you were only watching our local weather either. Climate change deniers such as Gene and many like him are simply echoing those who are willing to burn up the world for their immediate profit, which is not let live.

Don, I’m afraid I don’t measure up to your good ole boy farmer image although I wish I did. I have a BA in philosophy after a double major, the other in history. I have an MA in Ameircan cultural history. I have finished all the work for a PhD in American studies including the language requirements and a dissertation. I am not a climate change denier. Gene

I get more of a climate change ignorer than denier, but well said Don. So many people are wounded by ignorance, all of us really, because of the welter of lies we have grown up in. Lies, unknowingly absorbed, are a poison to the soul. There is a story that comes from R. D. Laing’s writing that claims that a polynesian custom for dealing with the insane was to have the entire extended family come down to the beach and start telling their secrets and lies. If the person did not return to sanity, someone was holding out and no one got to go home until it all came out and the person was returned to sanity. That sounds about right, except we have a whole frigging society driven mad by lies.

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There is NO EVIDENCE that the Bible is from or inspired by a God, or that either of these two man-made biblical scriptures -- foundational to Christianism -- is true: Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NONE.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. ~Thomas Shelby

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

Religion Divides

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books of the Freethinkers Bible

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

Democratic Socialism

Socialist Alternative is the organization that spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in decades. We are a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15/hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.

We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business, and we are campaigning to build an independent, alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.

We see the global capitalist system as the root cause of the economic crisis, poverty, discrimination, war, and environmental destruction. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis, a new generation of workers and youth must join together to take the top 500 corporations into public ownership under democratic control to end the ruling elites’ global competition for profits and power.

We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.

We are for democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over our daily lives.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman